“All that glitters is, in fact, gold”
– Mahisanny’s

If you’re rushing in from 3.x, and your Goldsmith gear is subpar, don’t worry! While your Goldsmith leveling journey will be harder, don’t worry so much! Read the clickies, they may help you!

Your gear is bad, and you feel bad. Playing catch up

Unlike gathering, it’s very VERY hard to “cheat” your way back into the game. The first few levels will be a little more difficult, but I’ve laid out a cost-efficient path for you! You’ll be EQUALS with even the most hardened crafters quickly enough!

If you’re using anything LESS than the Chimerical Felt / Hallowed Chestnut tier, you fall into the “some struggles ahead” pile.

What do I do to reach 61? 62?

Before we get into the specifics of Goldsmith, keep these little things in mind:

Grinding: is actually legit. You’re going to be using the materials anyway! Use the sparse HQ’s you get to craft levequest items if needed.

Commercial Engineering Manual: There’s no better time to use this than now when you’re a scrub. Grinding is legit at this point.

Levequests: You can buy them off the Market Board! You can craft them yourself, and if they’re NQ submit them anyway! Just do whatever you can that’s within your budget. It’s better than letting your leves pile up to 100, and any method to get out of “hell” is better than nothing. Buy up cheap NQ’s even!

Grand Company Submissions: They’re a “free” levequest, but they sometimes have things which are very expensive to craft. If you have a “star” entry, DO THAT AT ALL COSTS! The exp is huge. AT LEVEL 60 (to maybe 62) the chance of getting an endgame Heavensward submission is pretty significant. These are difficult to craft, and are sparsely stocked on the Market Board. GL!

Food: If you must, eat food to reach important CP points, or cover up where you feel you’re lacking. The Culinarian NPC in Kugane (X12 Y12~) sells some food, some of it can be pricey so maximize it! It also gives a welcome 3% EXP boost.

When does GSM leveling get better!?

At 61, 62, and 63, you will progressively get some gear upgrades that will get you within 90% power of the previous tier BiS – and at which point this guide gets much easier since everything is “UNIFORM” so to speak.

I will be putting more clicky box reminders for these events.

Level up your crafters simultaneously! (+DoL)

To prevent confusion on what rotation you use, what gear goes where… it’s just better IMO. There are many little reasons to do this which I am sure you can imagine.

Leveling gatherers at the same time as crafters is also good. You save money gathering your own resources. And when you DO decide to grind out some certain material (example, Koppranickel Sand), you get the gatherer EXP when you need it most (grinding in between collectibles!)See ourDoH| DoLlevelingguides.

LEVEL YOUR RETAINER

For any serious crafter, leveling your Retainer to 60+ is a HUGE money saver. They can gather monster drop mats for you, which tend to be expensive early on.

How do I level my retainer past 60!?You need to give it a job crystal. Go to any Retainer Vocate to get the voucher.

Goldsmith Leveling 60 to 62

L60 Fixing up your cross-class skills

To make things simple, try to have the same cross-class skills for every class. For the sake of simplicity we will try to use the SAME rotation for every class.

Disclaimer: I cannot promise this will work for you. Everyone is coming into Stormblood with different stat levels (you may be too weak or too strong). It’s very possible that your gear is SEVERELY lacking. In which case, it’s only natural you should expect more difficulty coming into Stormblood, right? But it’s a place to start.

If you’re missing CP, I highly suggest food buffs to cover your weaknesses in either CP or Craftsmanship.

No, it’s not the “perfect rotation” for you – only you can make that. It’s a good start template, and great for manual crafting as you can abuse the bejeesus out of “good procs” during the 2x Great Stride phase.

It’s all about progress: “How many steps it takes to synthesize progress” is the backbone of all rotations. Once you figure that out, you can reverse-engineer your own personal rotation.

THIS BECOMES SIGNIFICANTLY LESS OF A HASSLE IF YOU LEVEL ALL CRAFTERS SIMULTANEOUSLY! So you’re not confused on what rotation to use at what level / gear specs.See:DoH| DoLlevelingguides.

The below are TEMPLATES THAT YOU SHOULD TRY TO
ADJUST TO YOUR NEEDS.

L60 40DUR 558 DIFF

THIS ROTATION IS “WEAK”– it’s suited for guys fresh off the Heaven’sWard tier. THIS ROTATION IS MEANT TO BE EDITED to suit your needs. It’s a basic template, macro at your own risk. Stormblood recipes are L61 – Being a level under the recipe has huge drawbacks.

Now, here’s the thing. There is almost ZERO reason to try an 80 durability recipe while LEVEL 60 – I recommend trying them at L61. However, if you want to craft your catch up gear one level early (why..?).

Triphane Earrings of Healing is directly a downgrade from the ring. There’s no purpose doing this leve. (It costs double the amount of Triphane to make…)

Raw Triphane is an unspoiled node, which is heavily collected for Red Scrips and leveling. So its price really varies from time to time.

Bombfish Needle isn’t too expensive, but I would loathe doing this since it’s a triple leve that isn’t dirt cheap.

I guess the obvious choice is a dead ringer.

GSM 60 to 62: What I did in this tier

Here’s what I personally did in this tier:

This tier felt pretty bad. I don’t know why. It’s a great time to use Commercial Engineering manuals. Start of by making a bunch of Koppranickel Nuggets. They are used as a component in at least 109 recipes. So having your own stockpile isn’t bad.

Most notably, they are used to make Koppranickel Ingot. Which is next tiers value leve.

LEAVE OPEN MELDS AND EASY FORCE MELDS to cover up for any “Hey, I’m missing a tiny bit of craftsmanship!” scenarios. Melding? Feel free to upgrade the materia you will use. Of all the left-side pieces, the CHEST is the only one you will be changing down the line (65+). The rest are optional upgrades.

GSM 62 to 64: What I did in this tier

Slate Whetstone is actually great to get some early EXP in this tier – you’re about to use a couple of them too if you’re leveling other crafters.

Grinding on a bunch of Koppranickel Ingots is the way to begin here. Don’t use up all your nuggets, though! And they CAN BE DIFFICULT if you’re not 63.

There’s a “sequence” to this tier that I did that may help you out. You can first make a few ingots, then choose any of the 80 durability crafts (even from the previous tier) until you hit 63. They’re much easier to HQ.

If your gear is up to date make a Bombfish Needle for your Weaver.

At 63 you get your offhand and accessories, and you can much more easily HQ the Koppranickel Ingots!

Muudhorn Ring of Slaying can appear as a collectible. This isn’t so bad! It may not beat the semi-godlike Triphane Rings.

Making / Buying the HQ Offhand? I did not find this “necessary” UNTIL LEVEL 65. Looking back, if that was the case, then you might as well pick it up ASAP. It’s an “optional” upgrade for sure, but meaningful.

GSM L63 HQ Off-hand: Stiperstone Grinding Wheel IS MANDATORY! Please upgrade your off-hand as often as you can. The stats are huge.

I sincerely hope you have followed the gear upgrades up to this point. Your “end goal” is to get 409 CP. Make it happen.

From here on, I will assume YOUR GEAR IS UP TO DATE.

Gear Check: Just a reminder

If everyone followed the guide, their gear will now be caught up. Here’s what you should be packing…

28 thoughts on “FFXIV Goldsmith Leveling Guide (Stormblood Updated!)”

You mention in the Optional Rotation level 64: 40Durability 1058difficulty that weaver has no name/brand. This is incorrect. Weaver has Name of Lightning and Brand of Lightning. It is Goldsmith (GSM) that does not have a brand/name ability and must cross class into it.

I ended up leveling through leves that required Koppranickel Ingots, as suggested by the guide from 62-66. I went all the way to 70 with it. Reason being was the following:
1. Easy rotation to acquire the mats to make with a level 70 miner
2. Roughly 700K XP per triple turn-in
3. Durium Ingot was roughly 500K XP per turn-in

Yes, I realize making one ingot saves more on material costs than making three of them. However, getting 700K XP per leve was worth it. I’d have more leves to use to push to 70.

One other hint for people. Don’t forget to leverage your challenge log crafts (even the melding challenge!) for some cheap, easy XP once per week. Also, do the Custom Deliveries every week. That’s a ton of XP.

At level 56 you get a Collectable for Star Ruby, yields 6 scrip, and 103k xp for 2600+ quality. For just 3 raw star ruby and a basilisk whetstone (pre-HW component!) it is fairly quick to mine, dirt cheap to make, and gets you started on scrip farming. Would take around 100 to go from 56 to 60

Courier quests aren’t marked as such. They appear as normal levequests, and they start from the HOMETOWN. You can tell it’s a courier if the little image shows the the place you’re going (In GSM’s case, “NOT ULDAH”)

A better way to tell if it’s a courier leve is to look at the icon in the upper-right of the window. Ingenuity is what they’re called (http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Ingenuity) and it’s the picture of the lady giving bread to a guy. Every single leve with that icon is a courier delivery.

The worm fang needles give 31098 exp (62196 for HQ) and the silver chokers give 30282 exp (60564) for the level 30-35 GSM leves. both are the same turn in location and both are easy mats to get a hold of. So you end up getting more exp with the needles.

Ah ok, I have been trying to find items to grind on for 1 to 15 as I noticed that some of your guides have them and some do not. I would rather save the leves for the higher level when trying to level up crafting on multiple classes at the same time. Maybe you can add what items to grind on for 1 to 15.